Mrs. Spring Fragrance
One day, when Pan was five and Pat was seven, the little girl, for the
first time, came to school alone.
“Where is Pat?” asked the teacher.
“Pat, he is sick today,” replied Pan.
“Sick!” echoed Miss Harrison. “Well, that is too bad. Poor Pat! What is
the matter with him?”
“A big dog bite him.”
That afternoon, the teacher, on her way to see the bitten Pat, beheld
him up an alley busily engaged in keeping five tops spinning at one
time, while several American boys stood around, loudly admiring the
Chinese feat.
The next morning Pat received five strokes from a cane which Miss
Harrison kept within her desk and used only on special occasions. These
strokes made Pat’s right hand tingle smartly; but he received them with
smiling grace.
Miss Harrison then turned to five year old Pan, who had watched the
caning with tearful interest.
“Pan!” said the teacher, “you have been just as naughty as Pat, and you
must be punished too.”
“I not stay away flom school!” protested Pan.
“No,”—severely—“you did not stay away from school; but you told me a dog
had bitten Pat, and that was not true. Little girls must not say what is
not true. Teacher does not like to slap Pan’s hands, but she must do it,
so that Pan will remember that she must not say what is not true. Come
here!”
Pan, hiding her face in her sleeve, sobbingly arose.
The teacher leaned forward and pulling down the uplifted arm, took the
small hand in her own and slapped it. She was about to do this a second
time when Pat bounded from his seat, pushed Pan aside, and shaking his
little fist in the teacher’s face, dared her in a voice hoarse with
passion:
“You hurt my Pan again! You hurt my Pan again!”
They were not always lovers—those two. It was aggravating to Pat, when
the teacher finding he did not know his verse, would turn to Pan and
say:
“Well, Pan, let us hear you.”
And Pan, who was the youngest child in school and unusually small for
her years, would pharisaically clasp her tiny fingers and repeat word
for word the verse desired to be heard.
“I hate you, Pan!” muttered Pat on one such occasion.
Happily Pan did not hear him. She was serenely singing:
“Yesu love me, t’is I know,
For the Bible tell me so.”
But though a little seraph in the matter of singing hymns and repeating
verses, Pan, for a small Chinese girl, was very mischievous. Indeed, she
was the originator of most of the mischief which Pat carried out with
such spirit. Nevertheless, when Pat got into trouble, Pan, though
sympathetic, always had a lecture for him. “Too bad, too bad! Why not
you be good like me?” admonished she one day when he was suffering
“consequences.”
Pat looked down upon her with wrathful eyes.
“Why,” he asked, “is bad people always so good?”
III
The child of the white woman, who had been given a babe into the arms of
the wife of Lum Yook, was regarded as their own by the Chinese jeweller
and his wife, and they bestowed upon him equal love and care with the
little daughter who came two years after him. If Mrs. Lum Yook showed
any favoritism whatever, it was to Pat. He was the first she had cradled
to her bosom; the first to gladden her heart with baby smiles and wiles;
the first to call her Ah Ma; the first to love her. On his eighth
birthday, she said to her husband: “The son of the white woman is the
son of the white woman, and there are many tongues wagging because he
lives under our roof. My heart is as heavy as the blackest heavens.”
“Peace, my woman,” answered the easy-going man. “Why should we trouble
before trouble comes?”
When trouble did come it was met calmly and bravely. To the comfortably
off American and wife who were to have the boy and “raise him as an
American boy should be raised,” they yielded him without protest. But
deep in their hearts was the sense of injustice and outraged love. If it
had not been for their pity for the unfortunate white girl, their care
and affection for her helpless offspring, there would have been no white
boy for others to “raise.”
And Pat and Pan? “I will not leave my Pan! I will not leave my Pan!”
shouted Pat.
“But you must!” sadly urged Lum Yook. “You are a white boy and Pan is
Chinese.”
“I am Chinese too! I am Chinese too!” cried Pat.
“He Chinese! He Chinese!” pleaded Pan. Her little nose was swollen with
crying; her little eyes red-rimmed.
But Pat was driven away.
* * * * *
Pat, his schoolbooks under his arm, was walking down the hill, whistling
cheerily. His roving glance down a side street was suddenly arrested.
“Gee!” he exclaimed. “If that isn’t Pan! Pan, oh, Pan!” he shouted.
Pan turned. There was a shrill cry of delight, and Pan was clinging to
Pat, crying: “Nice Pat! Good Pat!”
Then she pushed him away from her and scanned him from head to foot.
“Nice coat! Nice boot! How many dollars?” she queried.
Pat laughed good-humoredly. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Mother bought
them.”
“Mother!” echoed Pan. She puckered her brows for a moment.
“You are grown big, Pat,” was her next remark.
“And you have grown little, Pan,” retorted Pat. It was a year since they
had seen one another and Pan was much smaller than any of his girl
schoolfellows.
“Do you like to go to the big school?” asked Pan, noticing the books.
“I don’t like it very much. But, say, Pan, I learn lots of things that
you don’t know anything about.”
Pan eyed him wistfully. finally she said: “O Pat! A-Toy, she die.”
“A-Toy! Who is A-Toy?”
“The meow, Pat; the big gray meow! Pat, you have forgot to remember.”
Pat looked across A-Toy’s head and far away.
“Chinatown is very nice now,” assured Pan. “Hum Lock has two trays of
brass beetles in his store and Ah Ma has many flowers!”
“I would like to see the brass beetles,” said Pat.
“And father’s new glass case?”
“Yes.”
“And Ah Ma’s flowers?”
“Yes.”
“Then come, Pat.”
“I can’t, Pan!”
“Oh!”
Again Pat was walking home from school, this time in company with some
boys. Suddenly a glad little voice sounded in his ear. It was Pan’s.
“Ah, Pat!” cried she joyfully. “I find you! I find you!”
“Hear the China kid!” laughed one of the boys.
Then Pat turned upon Pan. “Get away from me,” he shouted. “Get away from
me!”
And Pan did get away from him—just as fast as her little legs could
carry her. But when she reached the foot of the hill, she looked up and
shook her little head sorrowfully. “Poor Pat!” said she. “He Chinese no
more; he Chinese no more!”
THE CROCODILE PAGODA
When the father of Chung and Choy returned from the big city where lived
their uncle, he brought each of his little girls a present of a pretty,
painted porcelain cup and saucer. Chung’s was of the blue of the sky
after rain, and on the blue was painted a silver crane and a bird with a
golden breast. Choy’s cup was of a milky pink transparency, upon which
light bouquets of flowers appeared to have been thrown; it was so
beautiful in sight, form, and color that there seemed nothing in it to
be improved upon. Yet was Choy discontented and envied her sister,
Chung, the cup of the blue of the sky after rain. Not that she vented
her feelings in any unseemly noise or word. That was not Choy’s way. But
for one long night and one long day after the pretty cups had been
brought home, did Choy remain mute and still, refusing to eat her meals,
or to move from the couch upon which she had thrown herself at sight of
her sister’s cup. Choy was sulking.
On the evening of the long day, little Chung, seated on her stool by her
mother’s side, asked her parent to tell her the story of the picture on
the vase which her father had brought from the city for her mother. It
was a charming little piece of china of a deep violet velvet color,
fluted on top with gold like the pipes of an organ, and in the centre
was a pagoda enamelled thereon in gold and silver. Chung knew that there
must be a story about that pagoda, for she had overheard her father tell
her mother that it was the famous Crocodile Pagoda.
“There are no crocodiles in the picture. Why is it called a crocodile
pagoda?” asked Chung.
“Listen, my Jes’mine flower,” replied the mother. She raised her voice,
for she wished Choy, her Orchid Flower, also to hear the story.
“Once upon a time, there was a big family of crocodiles that lived in a
Rippling River by a beach whose sands were of gold. The young crocodiles
had a merry life of it, and their father and mother were very good and
kind to them. But one day, the young crocodiles wanted to climb a hill
back of the beach of golden sand, and the parents, knowing that their
children would perish if allowed to have their way, told them: ‘Nay,
nay.’
“The young crocodiles thereupon scooped a large hole in the sand and lay
down therein. For half a moon they lived there, without food or drink,
and when their parents cried to them to come out and sport as before in
the Rippling River, they paid no attention whatever, so sadly sulky
their mood.
“One day there came along a number of powerful beings, who, when they
saw the golden sands of the Rippling River, exclaimed: ‘How gloriously
illuminating is this beach! Let us build a pagoda thereon.’ They saw the
hole which the young crocodiles had made, but they could not see the
hole-makers at the bottom thereof. So they set to work and filled the
hole, and on top thereof they built a great pagoda. That is the pagoda
of the picture on the vase.”
“And did the children crocodiles never get out?” asked Chung in a sad
little voice.
“No, daughter,” replied the mother. “After the pagoda was on top of them
they began to feel very hungry and frightened. It was so dark. They
cried to their father and mother to bring them food and find them a way
to the light; but the parent crocodiles, upon seeing the pagoda arise,
swam far away. They knew that they never more should see their children.
And from that day till now, the young crocodiles have remained in
darkness under the pagoda, shut off forever from the light of the sun
and the Rippling River.”
“Please, honorable mother,” spake a weak little voice, “may I have some
tea in my pretty, pink porcelain cup?”
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Transcriber’s Note
Several words appear with and without hyphenation, and are retained as
printed: passersby/passers-by, everyday/every-day, singsong/sing-song,
doorstep/door-step.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
3.11 comforted Mrs. Spring Fragrance[,] Added.
4.22 said Mr[.] Spring Fragrance Added.
36.6 but schoolgirls in comparison.[”] Added.
50.21 in a long yellow book[.] Added.
114.26 “Oh![”] I cried, Added.
119.28 ‘Let me pass, sir,[’] Added.
119.29 in that tone of voice.[’]” Removed.
146.29 think of no reply to Lin [W/F]o’s speech. Replaced.
152.21 At these word[s] the girl bent Added.
171.22 [“]She seems less every day,” Added.
172.12 “Then,[”] said the young fellow, Added.
174.21 The lawyer moved le[si/is]urely Transposed.
228.8 a little mouse sq[u]eaked it Inserted.
281.17 making worse my broken wing[?/.] Replaced.
284.15 answered the other birds.[”] Removed.
315.10 smile and sing whe[n]ever she had the baby Inserted.